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Book. 

Copyright N?._ 



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THE LIFE OF OFFERING 



THE LIFE OF OFFERING 

MEDITATIONS 

UPON THE 

PASSION AND RESURRECTION 

OF 

OUR BLESSED LORD 

Arranged for use during Lent and Holy Week and for 
the Fridays throughout the Year 



BY THE REVEREND 
ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES 

Author of "The Triumph of the Cross,** "Come Unto Me,' 

"The Belief and Worship of the Anglican Church," 

"The Holy Christ Child," etc., etc. 



t 



MILWAUKEE 
The Young Churchman Co. 

1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Oooies Received 

FEB 12 1 906 

COPY B. 



5W 



copyright by 

The Young Churchman Co., 

1906. 



TO 

THE HONOUR AND GLORY 

OF 

THE BLESSED PASSION AND PRECIOUS DEATH, 

THE MIGHTY RESURRECTION AND GLORIOUS ASCENSION 

OP 

OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR 

JESUS CHRIST. 

* 

"The Preaching: of The Cross 

is to them that perish foolishness: but unto those which are saved 

it is The Power of God." 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. — The Life of Offering 1 

II. — The Offering of Ourselves to God - - - - 5 

III. — The Offering of Our Sins to God - - - - 18 

IV. — The Offering of Our Dear Ones to God - - 27 

V. — The Offering of Our Trials to God - - - 38 

VI. — The Offering of Our Bodily Ills to God - 43 

VII. — The Offering of Our Work to God - - - 50 

VIII. — The Offering of Our Souls to God - - - 57 

IX. — The Light in the Face of Jesus Christ - - 67 



PEEFACE. 

The meditations in this little volume were deliv- 
ered in large part "extempore'' in the course of a 
series of Good Friday addresses upon the Seven Words 
from the Cross. They are now presented in a slightly 
adapted form, being arranged so as not only to fulfil 
their original purpose, but also to be suitable for read- 
ing on the Fridays throughout the year. The latter 
object may specially commend itself to those who 
realize how often the lessons of the Cross are forgotten, 
when Good Friday has passed. The Roman Numerals 
designate the respective Fridays. 

In preparing such a work, shortness and simplicity 
are most desirable, but the thoughts and lessons which 
suggest themselves are so many, that it is exceedingly 
difficult on the one hand to say all that one would 
like to say and on the other hand so to make selec- 
tion as to embody both the old and the new. In 
the little book here presented, the author and preacher 
has omitted many things that might be found helpful, 
in order to confine himself largely to the one simple 
theme of the Life of Offering, the complete consecra- 
tion of ourselves to fulfil the Will of God. If there be 
found little that may be new or strange, the familiar 
flowers may possibly be arranged in a different way, 
and so contribute in some measure at least to the 
strengthening of the spiritual life, the Glory of God, 
and the Honour of Our Divine Kedeemer. 



A PKATEE. 

Lord Jesu Christ, Son of the Living God, Our 
Most Blessed Lord and Eedeemer : Grant us, Priest and 
People, so to have in remembrance Thy Life and Death 
and Character that we may pattern ourselves after 
Thee, so far as in us lies. Give us grace ever to go up- 
ward and onward, as we try day by day more completely 
to consecrate ourselves and souls and bodies to do the 
Will of God. Let Thy Blessed Passion and Precious 
Death show forth in us in our sorrow for sin and our 
death unto self : Thy Mighty Resurrection and Glorious 
Ascension in our living the risen life and our seeking 
the things which are above. Wash us in Thy Precious 
Blood, consecrate us with Thy Cross, illuminate us 
with Thy Light, strengthen us with Thy Power, and 
make us like unto Thee, meek and lowly and humble 
of heart. And if it be Thy Will, so prevent and bless 
us in all that we do, that in life we may live to the 
Honour and Glory of God, and in death may rise to 
the Life Immortal; through Thy Merits and Media- 
tion, O Lord, Our Strength and Our Eedeemer! 



THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

"Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 

unto God, which is your reasonable service" — 

Romans xii. 

Year by year, on each recurring Good Friday 
the Church calls her children to meet at the foot 
of the Cross and look upon Our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ nailed to the Tree of Shame. The 
Cross is the divider of men ; it is the parting of the 
ways; ever separating the wheat from the chaff, 
the good from the bad, for "it is to those who 
perish, foolishness ; but to those who are saved, the 
power of God." To this Cross, sooner or later, all 
men must come, to "look on Him whom they 
pierced/' 1 either in faith, love, and repentance, or 
in mockery, hate, and blasphemy. 

For the history of the two malefactors is ever 
being repeated, as the solemn spectacle of the 



1 Zechariah xii. 10, St. John xix. 37. 



2 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Suffering Saviour moves one person to seek mercy 
and pardon, and confirms another to continue 
hard and sullen : the Cross saving the one and con- 
demning the other, as with the two thieves on 
Calvary. 

"I, if I he lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all men unto Me" 1 saith the Master. The Cross 
is the Magnet that attracts, the Balance that 
weighs, the Judge that decides. Its cross arms 
extending outward, collect from all parts of the 
world; its lower arm, buried in the ground, 
points those of the earth earthy to the darkness 
of hell; its upper arm, raised towards the skies, 
lifts the spiritually minded to the light of heaven ; 
and when men finally look upon the Cross, the 
sacred symbol of our salvation, one last chance 
is ever given to the sinner to make his peace with 
God and be washed in the Precious Blood of Jesus. 

The devout Saint Bonaventura, on once being 
asked by Saint Thomas Aquinas to see the library 
from which he drew his thoughts and teachings, 
pointed to the Crucifix and said that all he knew 
he learned there. So we, looking upon Jesus 



1 St. John xii. 32. 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

Christ and Him crucified, may learn many pre- 
cious lessons for our soul's health, for the Cross 
is as a fountain never dry, from which continually 
flow the waters of life. For in the Cross and in 
the Seven Words spoken by the Master, can be seen 
set forth the Lord's Prayer, the Seven Beatitudes, 
the Seven Virtues, and those ever fruitful lessons 
of pardon, penitence, love, trust, devotion, conse- 
cration, resignation, and the like, revealing the 
love of God, the awfulness of sin, and the sacrifice 
of Jesus. 

Yet perhaps there is no more inspiring and il- 
luminating thought than that which we would now 
fain bring out, the Life of Offering or the com- 
plete consecration of ourselves to God, with all 
that we love and all that we have, to be His for- 
ever and ever, in this world and in the next, so 
that we may say, "0 Lord, give what Thou com- 
mandest and command what Thou wilt," as we 
live and die for God's Glory. 

Let it then be our practice not only at length 
upon Good Friday but also in briefer way upon 
every Friday to look upon the Master, offering His 
life for us. Let us see the Precious Blood being 



4 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

shed, let us hear the blessed words being spoken, 
and let the dreadful reality stamp its indelible 
impress on heart and soul, so that the Sacrifice of 
Calvary may not be unavailing for us. Nor let 
us fail to see if we cannot trace some likeness to 
ourselves in the faces of those about the Cross, that 
if we are among those who love and adore, our de- 
votion may deepen with each changing hour; 
or if we are among those who mock and revile, 
we may repent and reform ere death forever 
settles our doom. Saint or sinner, it matters 
not in the coming, if only in the leaving, that 
Cross with the Blessed Body of the blaster has 
made us real penitents indeed, washed in His 
Precious Blood, going forth to life or death, par- 
doned and in peace, the true children of God. 



II. 

THE OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 

The First Word: "Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do, 9 ' — St. Luke xxiii. 34. 

I. Our Lord stands on Calvary, waiting to 
stretch Himself upon the Cross. The last awful 
chapter in His Passion is to be fulfilled. For 
hours the Master has been suffering, as none other 
ever suffered. From the time when in the upper 
room He had instituted the Blessed Sacrament of 
His Body and Blood (His Passion in Holy Mys- 
tery), and in the Garden of Gethsemane had 
endured the Agony and Bloody Sweat as He saw, 
as it were, a vision of the shame of the Cross and 
the sin of the world, Our Lord had fully realized 
the words of the Prophet, "He is despised and re- 
jected of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief/' 1 

Betrayed by one Apostle, denied by another, 



1 Isaiah liii. 3. 



6 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

falsely accused, mocked, reviled, buffeted, spat 
upon, scourged, and crowned with thorns by the 
Jews or Eomans, with His Sacred Body worn 
by fasting and His Precious Blood flowing from 
His wounds, the Master never wavered in His 
love for man, but patiently bore all the agony and 
humiliation that He might offer Himself for the 
salvation of the world. With ropes about His 
neck and hands and carrying the heavy cross upon 
His shoulder, He had been led away as a sheep to 
the slaughter. Jeered at by the mob, urged on 
by the soldiers, Jesus had stumbled along the Way 
of Sorrows, repeatedly falling under the heavy 
weight of the Cross, to arise covered with blood 
and dust, again to struggle forward. 3STo pity or 
sympathy met His glance, save in the group of 
weeping women, who awaited Him at the turn of 
the road; but instead, there had rung the hoarse 
cries of "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" as the 
crowding multitudes raged at Him Whose whole 
life on earth had been one perfect ministry of 
love. On our earthly journey if trials and tribula- 
tions continually beset us, let us for our cheer and 
comfort picture Jesus on the Way of Sorrows ! 



OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 7 

II. At last they stand on Calvary, where Simon 
has borne the Cross, when Our Blessed Lord was 
unable longer to carry it. The hole is dug, the 
soldiers are ready, the mob stands expectant. The 
hour of the sacrifice has come, and Jesus, of His 
Own accord, stretches His Sacred Body upon the 
arms of the Cross. 

There is the sound of striking steel. There 
is the sound of a pleading Voice. Mortal men 
are crucifying the Lord of Glory, and He in words 
of tender mercy and yearning love is praying for 
those who are driving those dreadful nails through 
Hands and Feet, lacerating His Sacred Mesh, 
causing exquisite suffering, and staining Body 
and Cross, nails and soldiers with the crimson 
tide of the Saviour's Blood. Yet in His awful 
agony, Our Lord has no word of anger or re- 
proach, but prayers for pardon for those who so 
used Him, saying again and again, "Father, for- 
give them, for they Tcnow not what they do" 1 

The Master is praying for those who nailed 
Him to the Tree ! He is pleading His Passion for 
the souls of sinners ! He is offering Himself, His 

1 St. Luke xxiii. 34. 



8 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Life of Love, that the world may be saved. He is 
all love and He presents that love with His Life 
and Passion before the throne of God, offering 
His merits and mediation for sinful men. 

What inspiration and power is there for us 
in this example of the Master : of prayer, of par- 
don, of the presentation of the Passion, "for 
greater love hath no man than this: that he die for 
another/' 1 For the Saviour is fulfilling the will 
of God, is giving His life to God, and is pleading 
for the souls of men. May we not see, among 
many other lessons, the First Word from the 
Cross teaching us the Life of Offering, in the 
presentation of ourselves and souls and bodies to 
be a living sacrifice unto God, in a life hid with 
Christ in God, through union with Jesus in the 
Holy Eucharist, which is the continual pleading 
of the Passion ? 

III. As truly as Christian Life is life in 
union with Our Lord, as Christian character is 
character in union with Christ, so Christian offer- 
ing is offering in union with Christ. The pur- 
pose of our earthly life is to prepare us for 



1 See St. John xv. 13. 



OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 9 

heaven, which aim is accomplished by our "fol- 
lowing the example of Our Saviour Christ and 
being made like unto Him." 1 Consequently as He 
offered Himself to do the will of the Father, we 
must offer ourselves. Yet when we look at our 
lives, ourselves, our prayers, praises, penances, 
good works, whatever they may be, they are all full 
of faults and stained with sins, and are all un- 
worthy, unacceptable, and unavailing unless united 
with the offering of Our Blessed Lord, and joined 
to His merits and mediation. This offering of Our 
Lord, we have seen, finds its climax in the Passion, 
that "one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, 
oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole 
world," 2 for therein the Only-begotten Son of the 
Father offered Himself as the Lamb of God in the 
sacrifice once for all made on the Cross on Calvary, 
but evermore presented in glory in heaven, as our 
JjOvd cc ever liveth to make intercession for ws/' 8 and 
pleaded in Holy Mystery on earth, in the Holy 
Eucharist or Sacrifice of the Altar. Here there- 
fore is provided the means of union with Christ's 



1 See Baptismal Office. s Hebrews vii. 25. 

2 Canon of Cons., Communion Office, P. B. 



10 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Sacrifice of Himself once offered, for one intention 
of Our Lord in the Institution of the Holy Eu- 
charist was to leave the Church a way of com- 
memorating the Sacrifice of the Cross, and in the 
Holy Mysteries, to offer the Memorial of His Pas- 
sion for the living and the dead, "showing forth 
His death till He come/' 1 

IV. In the Holy Eucharist, thus pleading the 
Passion and continuing the intercession of the 
Cross, is found the very key to the higher and 
holier life. It bridges earth and heaven, unites 
God and man, and sanctifies each and every 
part of our earthly existence, bringing us into 
the very presence-chamber of the Risen King 
and at the same time remembering the Death 
Bed of the Saviour Christ. Received, it is the 
Bread of Life, feeding our starved souls with 
the life-giving Body and Blood of Our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Offered, it avails for the quick 
and the dead and is the all-prevailing prayer 
of the Church. The highest privilege of a priest 
is to stand at the altar and offer this Holy 
Sacrifice. The highest privilege of a layman is 



1 See I. Cor. xi. 26. 



OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 11 

to receive the Blessed Sacrament and assist at 
this pleading of the Passion. 

Think of the saints, past and present, who have 
found in these Holy Mysteries their most precious 
food, their most adoring worship, the very life 
itself, since Him they offered and received was 
Jesus Christ the Crucified and Risen Lord. Is 
not the main reason for the lack of faith, hope, 
and love to-day, for the absence of real spiritual- 
ity, for the poor and halting prayers, because the 
sacrifice of the Altar has lost its proper place in the 
life and worship of many people, because thou- 
sands are living apart from the Sacramental Pres- 
ence of Jesus and fail to plead His Passion? 

V. What would our life be, if we could daily 
come to that sacred Presence and daily plead the 
Passion? Might this not at least be the ideal of 
our Life of Offering, even if we failed closely to 
approach it: frequent Communion, frequent wor- 
ship, ever offering this Holy Sacrifice of the Altar 
on Sundays, Holy Days, and Saints' Days, before 
the great turning points and on the great anniver- 
saries of our life, in trial and temptation, in sor- 
row and sickness, in joy and pleasure, as our light, 



12 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

love, life, strength, and refreshment, offering with 
the Offering of Our Lord ourselves, our souls, our 
bodies, our faith, our hope, our charity, our 
prayers, our alms, our sacrifices, our good works, 
our confessions, our intercessions, our thanksgiv- 
ings, our praises, bringing before God ourselves 
and others, united to Christ in the pleading of His 
Death upon the Cross ? No one can overestimate 
this offering the Blessed Sacrament with "inten- 
tion," for all for whom we would intercede, 
whether others or ourselves: "Between our sins 
and their reward, we set the Passion of Thy Son 
Our Lord/' 1 

VI. In our Life of Offering, united with this 
Offering of Jesus, there will be our duty to our- 
selves and to others. 

The Life of Offering begins with self, accord- 
ing to the old adage, "Charity begins at home." 
This must be entire dedication to God. As when 
principles are fully assured, the proper applica- 
tion follows without special rule, so when our lives 
are perfectly offered to God, the daily practice of 
holiness needs little indication. This perfect of- 



!Dr. Bright, Hymn 228. 



OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 13 

fering of self to God practically begins and ends 
with the ivill. When the will is yielded to God, 
the crisis of life is past. Not until our will is in 
perfect conformity with the will of God, not until 
we can truly say to God, "I will what Thou wiliest 
and what Thou wiliest not, I do not will," is the 
conquest made, and perfect peace enters into the 
soul of man, for peace comes in the giving up of 
self entirely to the Divine Will. As long as one 
particle of self-will remains, as long as there is 
any compromise or half measure, we have neither 
rest nor resignation, but when self is conquered 
and offered to God, then, though the waves of sin, 
sorrow, or suffering are beating against us, we 
will be in perfect peace, as God reigns and rules 
in rightful sovereignty. 

VII. Perfect contrition places the sinner's soul 
in submission to the will of God: perfect contri- 
tion comes from looking on the Cross : and is that 
love of God and that sorrow for sin which, seeing 
life in its true aspect and God and man in their 
relative positions, bows the human will before the 
Divine Will, and, in the words of Saint Augustine, 
says : "I have sought pleasure in creatures which is 



14 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

only to be found in Thee; and now behold all is 
vanity and vexation of spirit; for Thou hast made 
me for Thyself and my heart hath found no true 
rest until it found rest in Thee/' The Life of Of- 
fering is thus the submitting of our self to God and 
the perfect acceptance by our will of the Divine 
Will, by which we come to will as God wills us to 
will, to do as God wills us to do, to think as God 
wills us to think, to speak as God wills us to speak, 
the doing, thinking, and speaking little by little 
coming into accord with the will that wills the Will 
of God, by the practice of constant recollection of 
the Divine Presence. 

VIII* See now how submission to the Divine 
Will affects our relations with others. We have en- 
emies, who have grievously injured or offended us : 
Self-will would give like for like, but the will 
conformed to the Divine Will forgives and prays 
for them. For can we refuse to forgive or pray 
for those who despitef ully use us when we think of 
God's will that they be forgiven, when we think 
of the gracious words of pardon of Jesus Christ 
on the Cross ? Naught that man can do to us can 
compare with what man did to Our Lord ! Surely 



OFFERING OF OURSELVES TO GOD. 15 

if He could forgive and pray for those who nailed 
Him to the Tree, we can do likewise for those who 
wrong us, and can offer the Holy Eucharist for 
their pardon and repentance. 

Or we have dear ones, and we would help 
them : so again we take their virtues, their faults, 
their needs, whatever they may be, and present 
them before the throne of Grace, in union with 
Christ's Holy Passion. We may not see or know 
the result, but we may be sure of this : that there 
is no more prevailing prayer that we can offer for 
those we love than the pleading of the Sacrifice of 
the Altar, which can never be fruitless or unavail- 
ing. 

IX. Here, then, we may see one lesson from 
the First Word from the Cross : the Life of Offer- 
ing, lived and offered in union with the Holy 
Eucharist, the memorial of the Passion, a life lived 
with Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar. That 
life naturally is largely a hidden life; it is un- 
known to the world about us ; it is so rich in inner 
peace and joy and exaltation of spirit that it is too 
sacred to reveal even to those nearest and dearest. 
For that life, for all its faults and failings, in its 



16 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

outward fruits, is nevertheless a life hid with 
Jesus, Who is gradually transforming such souls 
into the likeness of Himself, as they see the 
"Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ/' 1 
that dear Lord Who is just as really present in 
the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, as when once 
He walked the paths of earth or as now He stands 
at the right hand of God, just as really present, 
though after a different manner, that is spiritually 
and supernaturally. 

Shall we not resolve to live this Life of Offer- 
ing, ever submitting our will to the Divine Will, 
ever pleading the Passion of Christ, making the 
Holy Eucharist the centre of our life, offering 
that Sacrifice of the Altar for ourselves and for 
others, for friends and for foes, for the living 
and for the dead? For by this constant coming 
into the Sacramental Presence of the Master and 
offering our life to God in union with the Offering 
of Christ, we will make to ourselves an atmosphere 
of religion, we will gain the spirit of recollection, 
and we will win such measure of Divine Charity 
as may enable us to live and die in Christ and 



1 II. Cor. iv. 6. 



OFFEKING OF OUKSELVES TO GOD. 17 

rise to see God's Beautiful Face in the life here- 
after. This is the call of the Crucified One to 
those who would become the true children of the 
Father. This is the counsel of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, wherein God, speaking by His chosen Apos- 
tle, bids us to present ourselves "a living sacrifice, 
holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable 
service/' 1 The measure of our response will be 
the measure of our love for God and of our devo- 
tion to the Master. 



1 Romans xii. 



III. 

THE OFFERING OF OUR SINS TO GOD. 

The Second Word: "Verily, I say unto thee: to-day thou 
shalt he with Me in Paradise" — St. Luke xxiii. 43. 

X. There were two thieves crucified with Our 
Lord, one on the right and one on the left. These 
men were probably guilty of many sins and crimes, 
such as theft, murder, and rapine, and were now 
suffering the just penalty of their life of evil- 
doing. As they saw Jesus hanging on the Cross, 
they had mocked and jeered with the multitudes. 
Hardened and shameless, they had no pity or feel- 
ing for One they must have seen to be holy and 
innocent of any wrong-doing, for His very sanctity 
was a condemnation of their own wickedness. 

Sin, as it always does, had blinded their eyes, 
had deadened their ears, and conscience, which 
should have been the constant medium for hearing 
the still, small voice, the Voice of God, no longer 



OFFERING OF OUR SINS TO GOD. 19 

acted, or, if it did act, did so in vague and uncer- 
tain way. 

Yet now, in the Presence of Christ Crucified, 
face to face with death and with the Master unto 
Whom all judgment hath been committed, 1 re- 
pentance at the last hour, so rare and so dan- 
gerous to await, came to one of the malefactors. 
He stopped his mocking of the Master, he re- 
proved his comrade in sin, as he saw his life 
drawing to its close with nothing but evil-doing to 
offer. How long ago seemed those days of inno- 
cent childhood, how almost forgotten those faces of 
father and mother, who had once hoped so much of 
him, but how clear seemed his first steps in sin and 
the many years of wickedness which had followed 
those little beginnings of evil ! For those sins, un- 
checked and unrepented of, had eaten like some 
cancerous disease into his whole nature until 
naught but evil was thought and done. Now he 
was face to face with death and damnation. The 
callous indifference or fancied unbelief of the 
years past no longer availed, for he saw the 
certainty of merited punishment. Yet as the 



1 St. John v. 22. 



20 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

cold sweat stands upon his brows, and the chill of 
fear comes upon his body, he suddenly remembers 
those wonderful words just uttered by Jesus as He 
was nailed to the Cross, "Father, forgive them for 
they know not what they do." Could there be hope 
for him ? He looks at the Cross and sees the Pre- 
cious Blood staining the Sacred Body of the Lord. 
Could that Precious Blood avail for him? Sud- 
denly faith, hope, and love spring up within his 
soul. The Cross does its work! The thief will 
offer to God, himself and his sins — for that is all 
he has to offer — he will lay those sins upon the Sin- 
Bearer, to be washed away in His Precious Blood : 
"Lord, remember me when Thou comesi into Thy 
Kingdom/' 1 It is the cry of a child, the cry of a 
penitent, the cry of one who has become meek and 
lowly of heart, for the petition is only to be re- 
membered in mercy. "Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee, to-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise/' 2 
the Saviour answers, in His love giving pardon 
and peace to the penitent, absolution from the 
penalty of his sin, blessing in the world to come. 
And when later, the thief lay dead upon his cross, 



1 St. Luke xxiii. 42. 2 St. Luke xxiii. 43. 



OFFERING OF OUR SINS TO GOD. 21 

his soul was with Jesus, there to be purified and 
prepared in the Place of Departed Spirits for the 
joys of heaven. 

XL O! that solemn lesson from the Cross: 
two thieves crucified, one thief repentant ; for our 
warning and for our encouragement, that we may 
see the dreadful danger of putting off repentance 
for ourselves, yet of our charity may still hope for 
others we see continuing their evil life. 

Here then is our lesson: the Offering of our 
sins to God, in the practice of perfect contrition, 
in the carrying of our burden to the Cross in 
Confession, in the washing away in the Precious 
Blood in Absolution. Sins may be venial or mor- 
tal, that is: of great gravity and done willingly, 
knowingly, and deliberately and so cutting us off 
from God, or of less moment, grieving God, yet 
still preserving our union with Him. All sins, 
however, in greater or less degree, are offences 
against God's love, and all merit punishment here 
or hereafter. Sins ever increasingly multiply, 
for where virtues like fragrant flowers grow 
slowly, sins like noxious weeds spread rapidly, 
and so poisonous are they, that ere we know it, the 



22 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

venial sins have become mortal sins and the evil 
habits have become deeply rooted in our life. 
Sin caused the Fall, brought death and disease into 
the world, nailed Jesus to the Cross, and ever 
seeks to ruin our souls, for sin is the result of the 
temptation of the Devil, who while he can never 
force us to sin, by suggestion soon persuades us, 
if we do not be on our guard and use the weapon 
God has provided: His sanctifying power or Di- 
vine Grace, given in prayer and sacrament. 

XII. To escape the bondage and penalty of sin, 
no half-hearted measures will avail. The sins 
must be hilled, not wounded; they must be plucked 
out, not trimmed down; they must be sought for 
and found in examination of self and gathered to- 
gether and offered in confession to God. To cut 
off some sins and to cherish others is but a com- 
promise with the Devil, a bargain which in- 
variably weakens the will and exposes the soul to 
ruination. As a garment eaten by moths, tiny 
creatures as they are, is absolutely worthless, so 
the soul, eaten by sins, little as they may be, is 
entirely spoiled. No virtues avail so long as vices 
are cherished ; no good works merit so long as evil 



OFFERING OF OUR SINS TO GOD. 23 

reigns in the heart. We do not help a plague- 
stricken city by building beautiful monuments. 
We do not become clean by wearing handsome 
clothes. So with the soul, infected with evil and 
stained with sins, we need to seek the source or 
cause of the disorder and to use the cleansing 
waters of Contrition. What the world to-day 
needs above all things is the sense of sin, such ap- 
preciation of it as sets in bold, bare, dreadful 
contrast the infinite love and mercy and goodness 
of God and the awful ungratefulness, injury, and 
vileness of sin. For our hatred and horror of 
sin should not be because we fear hell, but rather 
because we grieve the Good God and make such 
evil return for His love. 

XIII. The offering of our sins to God is thus 
a means to this end. In the light of Divine Grace, 
assisted by the Holy Ghost, we search for our sins, 
we see our sins, we know them one by one, we hate 
those sins, we would free us of their burden, we 
would make a fresh start. With the thief, we look 
at the Tree. With the thief we hear Our Lord's 
gracious words. With the thief we would lay our 
sins at the foot of the Cross, offering those sins 



24 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

with our sinful selves to the Master, for His 
Precious Blood to fall upon them. For is He not 
the Sin-Bearer/ the Scape-Goat f Does He not 
say: "Come unto Me all ye that travail" 3 (labour- 
ing and struggling against evil habits) "and are 
heavy laden' 3 (bowed under the weight of our 
sins) "and I will give you rest" 3 (pardon and 
peace in Absolution) ? 

XIV. O ! what a relief is it to the sin-stricken 
soul to bear its burden to the Cross, and to offer 
those sins to God in real repentance! Not only 
dreadful doings, such as murder, adultery, and 
theft, which, God grant, we may never commit, 
but also any form of pride, anger, covetousness, 
impurity, envy, sloth, and gluttony, as well as any 
and all sins of omission and commission, for they 
all should be known and offered. For let us note 
carefully that in the Scriptures, almost all of 
those who are mentioned as being cast out of the 
kingdom of heaven are those sinning by omis- 
sion, such as the man with the one talent, and 
the foolish virgins, who failed to do what they 



1 Isaiah liii. 6. 2 Lev. xvi. 21, 22 ; Isaiah lxiii. 6. 

3 St. Matthew xi. 28. 



OFFERING OF OUR SINS TO GOD. 25 

should have done. Yet when we see our sins 
in all their clearness and when we tremble at 
the fresh assaults of temptation, we may re- 
member for our encouragement, that as savage 
dogs, for all their fierce barking, 1 do no harm so 
long as the door is barred, so our temptations, for 
all their horrid suggestions, do not injure the soul 
so long as the will closes the approach. 

XV. Let us learn, then, to offer our sins to 
God. First we must look on the Cross and by 
the sight of Jesus Crucified get true Contrition, 
which is love of God and sorrow for our sins. 
Then we must search our consciences and confess 
to God, alone or in the presence of a priest, each 
and every sin, offering them to Jesus, making this 
confession, briefly every night and more at length 
before Communion. Thus by this continual offer- 
ing of our sins to God, we will daily make a new 
start, pure and clean again, for while God may 
make us bear (as we should sincerely wish to bear) 
the temporal punishment for our sin, yet the eter- 
nal penalty of our sin is washed away by the Pre- 
cious Blood of Jesus, and free from that burden 



1 St. Francis de Sales. 



26 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

with garments washed in the Blood of the Lamb, 
we go forth to our daily life, in a state of salva- 
tion, absolved by Jesus, with the thought of par- 
don and peace making sweet melody in our hearts. 
XVI. Let us learn this lesson of offering our 
sins daily to God, and have the blessed assurance 
of the Master, "Go in peace, thy sins be forgiven 
thee/' 1 And let us at stated times offer the Holy 
Eucharist with special intention that it may be as 
the prayer of the poor thief which won pardon and 
peace: "Lord, remember me, when Thou comest 
into Thy Kingdom/' We need every help within 
our power. We must work out our salvation with 
fear and trembling. Let us then not neglect a 
means which our Lord has Himself provided for 
our use and aid. 



1 See St. Luke vii. 37-50. 



IV. 

THE OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 

The Third Word: "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy 
mother."— St. John xix. 26, 27. 

XVII. Our Lord sees at the foot of the Cross, 
Saint Mary His Mother and Saint John the Be- 
loved Disciple. They are standing there, full of 
unutterable sorrow for the sufferings of Jesus, 
powerless to extend any comfort to Him save that 
of silent sympathy and adoring love. The prophecy 
of Simeon, at the Presentation of Christ in the 
Temple, is now being fulfilled, as Mary in her 
sorrow for the agony of her Divine Son, realizes 
the meaning of those almost forgotten words, "A 
stvord shall pierce thy soul also/' 1 The holy 
Mother knew that the Passion was to be. She 
had probably been told that only by the sacri- 
fice of His Life, could the Master accomplish the 
salvation of the world, but, O ! how dreadful it 



1 St. Luke ii. 35. 



28 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

must have been to Saint Mary to see Him Whom 
she had brought forth at Bethlehem, Whom she had 
cradled on her knee and nursed at her breast, 
Whom she knew to be the Only-begotten Son of 
God, now hanging with stripped and bleeding 
body upon the Cross, between two thieves, suffer- 
ing the most exquisite agony ! 

Jesus sees the Virgin in her love and devotion 
standing at His feet. He knows the anguish of 
that loving heart and He would spare her the 
greater sorrow which was to come, with the shadow 
of darkness which He saw would soon gradually 
shroud the whole scene. It was a comfort for 
Him, the Master, to have the silent sympathy of 
Mary, the humble handmaid 1 of the Lord, yet He, 
Who never thought of Self, willed to forego even 
this to spare her who had been sanctified by the 
Holy Ghost 2 to be the instrument of His Incarna- 
tion and had so tenderly and reverently watched 
over His early years. 

XVIII. Our Lord the Good Shepherd was to 
lay down His life for His sheep. He would now 
make part of that sublime sacrifice of Self by send- 



1 St. Luke i. 38, 48. 2 St. Luke i. 35. 



OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 29 

ing away those nearest and dearest to Him on 
earth, in order to spare them the last agony. 
"Woman, behold thy son/' "Son, behold thy moth- 
er/' comes from the Cross. It is the Master's sa- 
cred charge and commission to Saint Mary and 
Saint John, consigning those two holy and devout 
souls, to a companionship together in a home hal- 
lowed evermore by their mutual love and adoration 
for Jesus, their Lord and King. We cannot exag- 
gerate this sacrifice of the Master, or this sacrifice 
of those He loved, as obedient to His command, 
they look long and lovingly upon Him they adored 
and then, with brave submission and resignation, 
separated themselves from Jesus on the Cross and 
went their way to their home, as the shadows set- 
tled upon the scene and dense, impenetrable dark- 
ness shrouded everything in its depths. Well may 
we, the children of the Church, so selfish and self- 
centered, learn this lesson of love in the sublime 
sacrifice of Jesus, in His agony sending away those 
who adored Him, and in the submissive obedience 
of Mary, in her sorrow leaving Him who was her 
very life. Well may we worship and adore Our 



1 St. John xix. 27. 



30 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Lord as God of God, and reverence and honour the 
Virgin as "Blessed among women/' 1 the Mother 
of Sorrows, the Man of Sorrows, sanctifying their 
several sufferings by undying love and sacrifice! 

XIX. In this example is seen the practical 
lesson for ourselves : the offering of our dear ones 
to God. 

Human love is but the extension of Divine 
love. Love comes from God and leads to God. 
It is the one enduring virtue. Faith ends in 
sight, hope in realization ; but love never ends but 
is everlasting, here on earth growing and blossom- 
ing, there in heaven attaining its full fruition in 
its perfect union with God. Saint Thomas 
a Kempis says : "Xothing is sweeter than love ; 
nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader, 
nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in 
heaven and in earth ; for love is born of God, and 
can rest only in God above all things created" ; and 
Saint Augustine says, "My heart findeth no true 
rest till it find rest in Thee," as God is loved in 
and through the creatures of His Hand. 

XX. Human loves, human friendships, and 



1 St. Luke i. 28, 42. 



OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 31 

human relationships are sacred in God's sight, and 
are the very sunshine and brightness of life. It is 
through earthly love that we come to appreciate 
Divine love. In the pure and holy love which 
should exist between husband and wife, parents 
and children, brothers and sisters, is seen reflected 
and extended the Divine love which unites the 
Three Persons of the Ever-Blessed Trinity and the 
sacred bond which joins the One and Only God 
with the creatures of His Hand. It is right to 
love our dear ones, to treasure them, to delight 
in their society, to wish to have them for our own, 
to love and to be loved. God smiles His Divine 
approval upon all pure and holy love and 
abundantly blesses it both to the giver and the re- 
cipient of that love. Yet He wishes all persons to 
be loved in Him. He gave us our dear ones to 
love ; He wishes us to offer back to Him those dear 
ones, not that we may cease to love them, but that 
thus dedicated to Him and hence regarded as a 
sacred trust, our love may be all the holier and 
richer, now that it is freed from the thought of 
self. For it is self and self only which would 
withhold our dear ones from fulfilling God's pur- 



32 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

pose for them, which would make them follow our 
ways and accede to our wishes regardless of the 
Divine call to a higher and holier life, here on 
earth or hereafter beyond the veil. 

XXI. Frequently it is due to this failure to 
sacrifice self in regard to our dear ones that has 
made such sad wrecks of lives which might have 
shone as glorious saints among their brothers. How 
often has this happened. How rarely do people 
truly offer their dear ones to God. They are 
willing to give them to the world, for them to gain 
earthly distinction and surround themselves with 
the evidences of worldly success, but they are not 
willing to offer them to God. For instance, 
parents are ready to see their sons make money 
and become great and famous in their work or pro- 
fession, or for their daughters to shine in society 
and make notable and brilliant marriages, but 
they are not willing to offer their sons to bear their 
cross after the Master in the Sacred Ministry, or 
for their daughters to serve Christ in a holy Sis- 
terhood, or for others to do some splendid, though 
humble, work as missionary, teacher, or nurse, 
and the like! Yet what blessing would accrue to 



OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 33 

dear ones offering or offered to God, whereby mar- 
riage would become holy matrimony and children 
would be brought up in the nurture and fear of the 
Lord, and old and young, even the yet unborn 
child, would be given and dedicated to God, to live, 
to work, and to die according to the Divine Will 
and Purpose. Or again, how seldom do people 
offer their dear ones to God in sickness and death. 
They will not see the Hand of God in these things, 
they want their dear ones to be well, to remain 
here, and so they place themselves in antagonism 
with God, who would sanctify 1 by the sickness or 
call 2 to Himself in death. 

XXII. Surely God's will should be supreme. 
If we, in the grace of the Holy Spirit, accept His 
will by the act of offering our dear ones to Him, 
then if they live we have this evidence of it being 
by Divine permission ; if they die, we entrust them 
to His loving care. Some have thought that souls 
in the Place of Departed Spirits fail to rest in 
peace through the rebellion and lack of resignation 
on the part of those here who refuse to bow meekly 
to God's will ! If, however, it matters not to the 



1 Hebrews xii. 6. 2 Rev. xiv. 13. 



34 THE LIFE OF OFFEEING. 

dead, it does to the living, whose characters are 
thus early marred and their sorrows made harder 
to bear, when they fail to resign themselves to 
God's good pleasure. 

It is of course hard to see a dear one suffer, 
it is natural to wish the dear one to live, it is 
difficult to give up our wishes and aims ; but when 
we remember that God knows best, when we 
realize the privilege of suffering as a means of 
fellowship with Jesus and as an aid in the spirit- 
ual life, when we see that death to those dying in 
faith, love, and repentance is but the entrance to 
a better world and a larger life, surely we should 
see that it is only self that would hold our dear 
ones back, instead of fully and resignedly, even 
with the tears streaming from our eyes, offering 
them to the Good God. Sometimes, too, the very 
act of offering our dear ones to God makes Him 
spare them to us, as a reward for our resignation, 
where otherwise He takes them from us, since we 
rest in them and not in Him. 

XXIII. Here, then, is another lesson from 
the Cross : to offer our dear ones to God. Only in 
this dedication of them and this submission to Him 



OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 35 

are our human loves fully enjoyed and rightly 
cherished. Then they will be received as God's 
gift to us, we will hold them by Divine permission, 
we will see God dwelling in and working through 
our love, using our dear ones and ourselves for His 
Honour and Glory, as we place all in His hands, 
safe in the thought of His Infinite love and His 
Infinite knowledge. 

XXIV. And this act of offering assumes a 
new meaning when we think of life. For our 
earthly existence is not an end in itself, but is a 
drop in the boundless sea of eternity, fitting us and 
our loves for an endless future. Love is undying. 
Life is endless. A few sufferings and sorrows here 
are as nothing to the rest and joy of the world to 
come. When the shadows flee away, when the 
crown succeeds the cross, then will be found the re- 
ward of that perfect submission to the will of God, 
which here offered our dear ones, and there finds 
them in heaven, to love and live for evermore in 
unutterable joy, peace, and glory in the Presence 
of God. 

XXV. The spirit of offering, however, is the 
result of growth. The natural man, unaided, can- 



36 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

not attain to it, for self is the one ruling thought. 
We need the sanctifying power of God. As flowers 
need the warm sun and the refreshing dew, we need 
the love of God and the assistance of Divine Grace. 
Then will we grow, little by little, until we can 
truly, with perfect resignation and submission not 
only make our repeated acts of offering our dear 
ones, but also be in a continuous attitude of offer- 
ing. We will come to seek to know God's will and 
way as to their life and work in the world, we will 
come to see God's hand as to their sicknesses and 
death, and we will bow with the resignation of the 
saintly Job, saying: "The Lord gave: the Lord 
hath taken away; Blessed be the Name of the 
Lord/' 1 

Let us then look at the Cross, and note the 
wonderful lesson of the Third Word of the Master. 
Let us copy His sublime sacrifice of Self. Let 
us love our dear ones all the more in that we love 
God first. Let us offer our dear ones to Him, as 
into the hand of a Faithful Creator and Merciful 
Father. Let us learn to rest in God, to desire 
His will, to be submissive and resigned, for in thus 



1 Job i. 21. 



OFFERING OF OUR DEAR ONES TO GOD. 37 

offering our dear ones, with all of our human 
loves and relationships to Him, we best make for 
Christian character and the Christian home; we 
chasten and ennoble and dignify those sacred bonds 
which unite us to God and to man, and show forth 
that spirit of unselfish love and sublime sacrifice 
which Jesus showed when He committed the Holy 
Mother to Saint John, and gave up those He held 
dearest. 



THE OFFERING OF OUR TRIALS TO GOD. 

The Foubth Word: "My God, My God, why hast Thou 

forsaken Me?" — St. Matthew xxvii. 46; 

St. Mark xv. 34. 

XXVI. Deis t se darkless now veiled the 
scene, and in cover of that shrouding blackness, the 
Powers of Evil made their greatest assault upon 
Our Blessed Lord. The Master was to be the 
Scape-Goat or Sin-Bearer, as upon Him was placed 
all the sins of the whole wide world, past, present, 
and future, for Him to make atonement and make 
it possible for the penitent sinner to be saved. 
The great trial of the Cross had come. Before 
the Mind of Jesus, that All Holy, Spotless Mind, 
came the awful vision of sin, with its crimes and 
criminals, its evil and its evil-doers, the long pro- 
cession of those who had wrecked their lives and 
ruined their souls by murder, lust, and all manner 
of mortal sin. 



OFFERING OF OUR TRIALS TO GOD. 39 

Even our own faces must have been seen in that 
assemblage, as our sins, little or big as they may 
be, crucify the Christ afresh and put Him to an 
open shame. O ! the agony of that vision to the 
sinless Saviour ! O ! the sorrow of Him who was 
shedding His Life Blood for man, to know that 
it was unavailing for some, since they would not 
be saved ! ! Sacred Heart of Jesus full of 
unutterable love and yearning, so powerless over 
some then and now! Darkness, doubt, disap- 
pointment, all presented themselves to the Master, 
as with Satan mocking at His sacrifice, came the 
cry of His agonized Mind, "M y God, My God, why 
hast Thou forsaken Me f n We may not know the 
full meaning of the cry. Some have thought that 
Our Lord was saying portions of the Psalms. 
We may at least believe this, that it was but the 
yearning for the Father's Face, momentarily hid- 
den by the vision of sin, and at the same time was 
a Conqueror's cry uttered for our encouragement 
and comfort, telling us that we must ever long for 
the Face of God and in all our trials still be able 
to say, "My God, My God." Then came peace, as 



1 St. Matthew xxvii. 46. 



40 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

in the darkness our salvation was won. The 
Powers of Evil were beaten back, the vision of sin 
and sinners faded away, the Master was triumph- 
ant, the final battle was won. 

XXVII. So in our life, there will be the hours 
of darkness. Some doubt will shake our faith in 
God, some disappointment will shake our faith in 
man, some shadow of sorrow and suffering will 
come and darken all of the sunshine and bright- 
ness of our spiritual life, and the Face of the 
Father will seem to be withdrawn, until we, too, 
cry out, "My God, my God, why hast Thou for- 
saken me?" 1 

Yet we are only being tested and tried and de- 
veloped. On the rainy day the sun is still shin- 
ing behind the clouds. In our hours of darkness, 
the Father's Face is still smiling upon us. The 
sun is all the more beautiful after the rain. God 
is all the more loved after the trial. It but be- 
hooves us to drive back the powers of evil, to bend 
before the storm as the palm before the tempest, 
to raise ourselves triumphant in our faith, hope, 
and love when the clouds have passed by. 



1 St. Matthew xxvii. 46. 



OFFERING OF OUR TRIALS TO GOD. 41 

XXVIII. The way to accomplish this is to 
offer our trials and tribulations to God: those 
doubts that He may change them into faith, 
those disappointments that He may transform 
them into patience, those sorrows and sufferings 
that He may show to us their saving grace. In 
this spirit we should even desire to be tried, 
and developed, for then we may the more honour 
and glorify God. Then we will learn both 
weak and strong points, then we will come to 
rely upon Divine Grace more than human power, 
then we will come ever to cast our care upon Him 
Who careth for us. Would we wish to cross the 
ocean in a ship which had never been tried? 
Would we like to lead into battle troops which 
had never been trained ? In our life, temptation 
and trial prove us and designate us. They are in 
fact, the measure of God's love and of our merit. 
The stronger the doubt, the difficulty, or the temp- 
tation, when resisted and overcome, the stronger 
our characters, the greater our merits. For the 
Devil never bothers with great temptations, those 
whom he may claim as his own, at will. 

XXIX. Let us learn then to offer our trials to 



42 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

God, asking Him that we may so bear them that 
they may be means of many a rich blessing. Then 
in His grace let us be patient and persevering and 
prayerful, until in God's good time, the shadows 
pass away and a wonderful calm and peace settle 
upon the soul, as the Father's Face, which has 
never changed, is seen smiling in love upon His 
conquering children. Thus our very falls will con- 
tribute to our final victory, as profiting by bitter 
experience, we come to be continually on the watch 
and by being prepared, make the assaults of the 
world the flesh and the devil end in glorious vic- 
tory for ourselves. 



VI. 

THE OFFERING OF OUR BODILY ILLS TO GOD. 

The Fifth Word: "I thirst."— St. John xix. 28. 

XXX. The preceding cry of Our Lord was 
the anguish of His Soul. That which He now ut- 
ters, "I thirst/' is the expression of the pain of His 
Body. When we think of all that Jesus suffered 
during those long hours since He was betrayed and 
taken, when we think of those six hours, now draw- 
ing to a close, when He hung upon the Tree, and 
picture His bleeding Wounds and fevered Body 
and parched Lips, we may gain some faint idea of 
that unutterable agony of the Master which drew 
from Him those words, "I thirst," sounding out 
from the solemn stillness about the Cross. Those 
words fulfilled the Scriptures, 1 drew forth from a 
soldier an act of sympathy as he offered Jesus wine 
upon a sponge, and they spiritually signify Our 



1 St. John xix. 28 ; Ps. lxix. 22. 



44 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Lord's yearning love and longing for souls, for 
souls deep in the depths of sin, for which souls He 
was laying down His life. Perhaps He saw pass- 
ing before Him a vision of all the souls ever born 
or to be born, many of them denying Him, cruci- 
fying Him, scorning salvation, preferring sin to 
their Saviour, wicked and worldly, given over to 
all manner of evil and vice, following the world, 
the flesh, and the devil, regardless of the Sacrifice 
of the Cross, making no response to the call of the 
Crucified. Perhaps He saw our souls, and all the 
wrong things we do, so often willingly, knowingly, 
and deliberately, those sins against God and man. 
Well might Jesus cry, "I thirst/' as He saw souls 
whom He came to save, going to their doom! 
But in seeing this spiritual application of Our 
Lord's words, we must not forget their primary 
meaning, of His Agony of Body. His cry proved 
the perfection of His Humanity, that He was true 
Man. It was a proof of His Incarnation. And 
it is a picture of physical sufferings all the more 
intense from Our Lord's perfection, yet suffering 
willingly, gladly endured for us men and for our 
salvation. 



OFFERING OF OUR BODILY ILLS TO GOD. 45 

XXXI. "I thirst/' What lessons are con- 
tained in these two short words! The thirst we 
must have in our bodies for the things necessary to 
their sustenance. The thirst we must have in our 
hearts for souls to win for God. The thirst we 
must have in ourselves for spiritual things, for 
prayer and sacrament, for praise and worship, for 
virtues and graces, for all that draws us upwards 
and onwards towards God, for God Himself as the 
ultimate end of all. Alas ! How seldom has man 
this spiritual thirst which makes him seek to know 
and love God and to prize above all else his relig- 
ious privileges and blessings which bridge the gap 
between God and man, earth and Heaven ! How 
seldom we can say, with the Psalmist, "My soul is 
athirst for God: yea, even for the Living God" / 
or realize Our Lord's promise, "Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: 
for they shall be filled/' 2 

XXXII. Yet there is another lesson, more 
often missed perhaps than the first, and that is our 
attitude towards God, when sooner or later we lie 
on the bed of sickness, when suffering clouds 



1 Psalm xlii. 2. 2 St. Matthew v. 6. 



46 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

the mind and weakens and wastes the body and 
the poor, parched, fevered tongue cries out in the 
words of the Master, "I thirst" Sickness came 
into the world as a result of the fall. Sickness 
comes to us as the result of our sins or the sins of 
our forefathers, but nevertheless the ills come by 
Divine Permission. For God, by these afflictions, 
cleanses and purifies us, giving us fellowship with 
Jesus in His sufferings, offering us a cross to bear, 
developing our character by making us "perfect 
through suffering/' 1 and teaching us of the short- 
ness and uncertainty of human life and of the end- 
lessness of the great Beyond. 

XXXIII. Sickness comes from God to sanc- 
tify us. When, then, the cup of pain and sickness 
comes to us, we should remember that it is the 
God of Love 2 Who holds it to our lips. We should 
receive it with resignation, and should offer it to 
God, that He may bless it to our spiritual gain, 
that it may thus be in a measure sacramental, that 
is, that the outward bodily ailments may be the 
signs of an inward spiritual blessing. Thus when 
we are sick, we should do three things: first, we 



1 Hebrews ii. 10. 2 1. St. Peter iv. 19. 



OFFERING OF OUR BODILY ILLS TO GOD. 47 

should take our sickness patiently and offer it to 
God for His blessing ; secondly, we should look at 
the Cross and unite our sufferings with the suffer- 
ings of the Master ; thirdly, we should seek to per- 
fect our union with God, by prayer and sacra- 
ments, by which our will accepts the will of God, 
and we rest in the recollection of His mercy and 
goodness, knowing that "underneath are the Ever- 
lasting Arms/' 1 Or to be more explicit, when we 
lie on a sick bed, we should not only offer our sick- 
ness to God and unite ourselves with Jesus, but 
we should send for the priest, and, after seeing 
him, should receive the Holy Communion of Our 
Lord's Body and Blood, which should be an in- 
estimable comfort to those who love the Master. 

XXXIV. !N~or should the sick one ever be 
without a crucifix or picture of the scene on Cal- 
vary on the wall, that looking on the representation 
of the Death and Passion of Our dear Redeemer, 
he may be moved to larger measure of faith, love, 
and repentance, and may cheerfully bear his own 
passion and death if God so wills it. The crucifix 
is thus no empty symbol or ornament. It is rather 



1 Deuteronomy xxxiii. 27. 



48 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

a medium of prayer, being an inspiration and illu- 
mination to the mind and soul. For as a photo- 
graph calls up the memory of a dear one, so the 
crucifix presents the Passion of Jesus and in a way 
so dramatic and realistic that it appeals to the love 
and devotion of the faithful and constrains to the 
contemplation of heavenly things as nothing else 
will do. 

XXXV. If the sick one be very ill and un- 
able to think much, let him remember that he may 
pray by intention, that is, he may say the Lord's 
Prayer with special meaning that it will be for that 
which he longs to say. Or he may do nothing more 
than with intense devotion look on the carven 
Christ of the crucifix and unite himself with the 
Prayer of Jesus on the Cross. Nor should his 
attendants be unmindful of his spiritual state, for 
prayers said for his hearing and the Bible read for 
his noting, will be of great interior comfort and 
may also result in great physical improvement. 

XXXVI. How many people do not mend in a 
bodily way simply because their sin-sick souls need 
a priest and the comforts of religion, and on the 
other hand, how many persons rapidly recover, 



OFFERING OF OUR BODILY ILLS TO GOD. 49 

because, with souls stayed on God and resting in 
His will, their spirits are at peace in Jesus ! 

Let us now learn this lesson from Our Lord's 
bitter cry, "I thirst/' and when ill, offer our sick- 
ness to God, unite our sufferings with those of 
Jesus, look at the Cross, see the priest, and receive 
the Blessed Sacrament, and be perfectly resigned 
to whatever happens, be it life or death. Lor to 
those so prepared the Gate of Death is as a door 
that leads from the darkness into the light, that 
translates the faithful to a place of rest and re- 
freshment. "Blessed are the dead who die in the 
Lord, for they do rest from their labours and their 
ivories do follow them/' 1 



1 See Rev. xiv. 13. 



VII. 

THE OFFERING OF OUR WORK TO GOD. 
The Sixth Woed: "It is finished. "—St. John xix. 30. 

XXXVII. The ej^d of the Sacrifice is al- 
most reached. The shrouding darkness is soon to 
melt away before the shining sun, "for at evening 
time it shall be light/' 1 when Our Lord, having ac- 
complished the salvation of the world, would hang 
dead upon the Cross, and preach to the spirits in 
Paradise. 2 

From the tree in Eden came the Fall. From 
the Tree on Calvary came the Redemption. Only 
the suffering of the Son of God could atone for 
man's sin and make the "one full, perfect, and suf- 
ficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction," for the 
whole world. For it required a Perfect Offering. 
Man, stained with sin, could not make this. There- 
fore the Son of God became Man for us, that by 



1 Zechariah xiv. 7. 2 1. St. Peter iii. 19. 



OFFERING OF OUR WORK TO GOD. 51 

His absolutely sinless life and death He could 
make what man could not do. From the beginning 
to the end of Christ's holy life, there was not one 
fault or flaw. 1 Otherwise it would have been un- 
availing. Yet though tempted in all points like as 
we are, Jesus was absolutely sinless, 2 absolutely 
perfect, the Pattern and Example for all time. 
Now He was to lay down that life with all its good 
works, all its boundless store of merits. He was to 
offer it to God. So from the Cross there came 
those solemn words of presentation, as His life 
and work are offered to the Father, "It is fin- 
ished/' 3 

XXXVIII. It is the ideal for us. It is 
the lesson of offering our work to God. We 
may never be able to say, with Jesus, "it is 
finished" in the sense that our work is per- 
fect, but we may do so in that other sense that 
it is done, that we have accepted our responsi- 
bility and have done our duty in that state of 
life unto which it hath pleased God to call us. 
Many a person goes on his way accomplishing little 
or nothing. He has no object in life. He has no 



1 St. John viii. 46. 2 Hebrews iv. 15. s St. John xix. SO. 



52 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

rule in life. He simply drifts. To such an one 
Our Lord's words come with strong condemnation, 
as He holds up before him His Own Perfect Life, 
and says, "It is finished" ! 

XXXIX. What is our life? What is our 
work? What are our aims and ambitions, our 
ideals and standards? Alas! many people en- 
tirely miss the meaning of their life and work. 
They live and work for self. They prefer the 
"praise of men more than the praise of God" 1 
They either love their life and work because they 
give them pleasure and bring them profit, or they 
hate both their existence and their labour, because 
the one is not easy and the other is not paying. 
Consequently there are few fruits to be seen. 

XL. Life and work, however, should be re- 
garded very differently from this. Life here is 
given to enable us to fit our souls for heaven. Work 
is given that we may glorify God by the proper use 
of our talents, opportunities, and privileges. The 
bootblack who does his best to shine shoes for the 
Glory of God is blessed by God. The millionaire 
who piles up wealth for his own selfish ambition 



1 St. John xii. 43. 



OFFERING OF OUR WORK TO GOD. 53 

is rejected of God. It is not that which we do, 
but the way in which we do it that tells, and happi- 
ness and contentment come and come only in doing 
all we do, to the best of our ability as in God's 
sight, for His Glory. There should be in fact a 
religious atmosphere about our very work, for 
God the Master Builder is with us, wherever we 
are. When God brought the present earth into 
being at Creation and made one after another of 
His wonderful works, He could say after each, 
"And God saw that it was good/' 1 So with us, 
when we work, we should so aim to have both the 
nature of our work and the performance of our 
work such that we can hear those words, "And 
God saw that it was good/' 1 as we offer that work 
to God for His acceptance. 

XLI. Work evil in itself and contrary to the 
Christian profession, no self-respecting man or 
woman should take ; work on Sunday unless time is 
given for the proper worship of God, should also 
be refused. It matters not what or where the work 
is : it should all be offered to God. If a decided vo- 
cation or fitness for a certain work be seen, then it 



1 Genesis i. 10, etc. 



54 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

is our bounden duty to do all we can, to follow that 
calling. But if the way cannot be made to open, 
or if from necessity we have to take up some other 
labour, or if we seem to have no special calling, we 
should do the work that is nearest, believing that 
it is God's will, and do it in the sense of His Pres- 
ence with us as we work. 

XLII. "Not let us forget that there must be a 
division of labour. We cannot all do the same 
thing. There must be masters and men, there must 
be those doing the great things, there must be those 
doing the little things, but all are equally import- 
ant in the sense that the parts form the whole, and 
that any one part poorly done or not done mars or 
detracts from the whole. This is a lesson particu- 
larly needed to be noted in the age in which we 
live, when wrong notions detrimental to the dignity 
of labour have led many to aspire to do things for 
which they are not fitted, and have made failures 
of those who would have been most successful in 
more modest walks of life, and have caused much 
poor work to be done. 

XLIII. What a dignity then attaches to the 
most menial work when done to the Glory of God 



OFFERING OF OUR WORK TO GOD. 55 

and offered to Him. The scrub-woman, the street- 
cleaner, the day labourer, the mechanic, the mill 
hand, the merchant, the banker, the man of affairs, 
the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the woman in 
the home, the man in the world, are all important 
in God's sight and their work blessed and crowned 
by God when done for His Glory and offered up 
to Him. 

XLIV. Let us learn to say "It is finished" by 
doing our work cheerfully and lovingly, by doing 
it with method and system, by doing it with atten- 
tion and thoroughness, by doing it with every ef- 
fort to make it our best — for nothing short of our 
best is really finished — and doing it with glad- 
ness in our heart and a song on our lips. Then let 
us offer that work to God, asking God for Christ's 
sake to wash away all the imperfections in the 
Blood of Jesus and to join all that is good to His 
merits and mediation. Let us offer our day's 
work, day by day: it may be those little things 
about the house, the mending, cleaning, cooking, 
washing, and the like, or those studies at school, or 
those books kept at the office, or those bricks laid 
and those boards sawed as mason and carpenter, 



56 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

or that tending of those looms at the mill, or those 
hours spent in hard work in office and counting 
room, court, hospital, or church, all those suc- 
cesses, all those failures, for God sees them all, 
God accepts them all. "Thou God seest me" 1 
should be our first motto in our work. "First 
give thyself to God: then to the work God gives 
thee to do" our second thought. For only in 
working as in God's Sight and Presence, for His 
Honour and Glory, do we have true joy, inspira- 
tion, comfort, and guidance in our work, do we 
feel the importance and dignity of even the little 
things, and are able to offer to God all our work, 
from the fulness of heart, knowing we have done 
our best, and being able to say : "It is finished" 



1 Genesis xvi. 13. 



VIII. 

THE OFFERING OF OUR SOULS TO GOD. 

The Seventh Word : "Father, into Thy Hands I commend 
My Spirit." — St. Luke xxiii. 46. 

XLV. The black darkness still shrouds the 
Cross. Only the Sacred Body of the Master shows 
forth from the shadows. Huddled together the 
people look and fear and tremble. The powers of 
evil have done their worst, but in crucifying Christ 
they have wrought their own doom, for the sacri- 
fice of the Cross won salvation for the world, and 
forever beat back Satan and his legions, and con- 
quered death and the grave. 

Now the end was come : and not the end those 
wicked men and those devilish powers had im- 
agined. Sin with fear and hate looked at the 
Cross. Holiness with love and life hung on the 
Cross. The suffering, bleeding Saviour was the 
mighty Conqueror of the world, the Sovereign 
Lord of Life and Death. His work is now accom- 



58 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

plished: His life has been offered for man: His 
death is now to complete the act of Sacrifice, as 
He, both Priest and Victim, with Blood sprinkled 
upon the Tree, enters the Holy of Holies, to make 
atonement for the sins of the whole world. He laid 
down His life of His Own accord : His enemies had 
crucified Him, but throughout each act, Our Lord 
had been a willing Sufferer. ]STow to give a final 
proof of His willing sacrifice of Himself, to show 
that of His Own power He gave up His life, the 
Master utters one great, tremendous cry, 1 showing 
that He was the Son of God, rending the veil of 
the Temple in twain, 2 causing a great earthquake, 3 
calling the saints from their graves, 4 sending flee- 
ing homeward the multitudes beating their breasts 
with fear and horror, 5 and making the silent Cen- 
turion cry out, "Truly this was the Son of God."* 
Then all accomplished, Jesus bowed His Bleeding 
Head upon His Breast and committed His Soul 
into God's charge: "Father, into Thy hands I 
commend My Spirit/' 7 



1 St. Luke xxiii. 46. 5 St. Luke xxiii. 48. 

2 St. Luke xxiii. 45. 6 St. Matthew xxvii. 54. 

3 St. Matthew xxvii. 51. 7 St. Luke xxiii. 46. 

4 St. Matthew xxvii. 52. 



OFFERING OF OUR SOULS TO GOD. 59 

XL VI. Jesus Christ is dead upon the Cross. 
His Body, pierced and bleedings hangs upon the 
Tree, His Soul, pure and spotless, is in Paradise, 
but as God, the Lord of Life, He is with both. His 
Human Body on the Cross, and with His Human 
Soul beyond the veil, One Person, with Divine 
and Human Natures, suffering and dying on the 
Cross as Man, saving and redeeming the world as 
God, One Person, the Only Begotten of the Father. 

The offering of Himself was complete, with 
the offering of His Human Soul at death. 

What a dreadful death ! No couch or covering ! 
No words of love or sympathy ! Stripped on the 
Cross ! Alone ! Only God ! Yet what a perfect 
death! May not we sinning men and women 
learn of Jesus Christ to die, seeing in the spotless 
Saviour the great Example of perfect faith, love, 
and resignation, seeing in the absence of all com- 
fort the lesson of resting in God, supported by Di- 
vine consolation, seeing in the offering of the 
Master's Soul to God the way for us to give our 
spirit back to God as life ebbs away ! 

XL VII. At death God calls us to the life be- 
yond the veil. The bodies sleep but the life of the 



60 THE LIFE OF OFFERING 

spirit goes on forever. As the ship sinks below the 
horizon and is lost to sight, but still goes sailing on, 
so the soul leaves the body at death, and passes 
from earth into that endless eternity beyond the 
grave. While we are in life we are in the midst 
of death. As St. Francis de Sales once said, "We 
know not when death awaits us. Let us then learn 
to await death." 

The soul comes from God: the soul goes to 
God ; as He gave it to us, so we should give it back 
to Him. The soul is a sacred trust, it belongs to 
God, it was made for His Glory, it was given to 
praise and magnify Him in the heavenly places ! 

XLVIIL Alas ! how many souls through un- 
repented sin are doomed to the outer darkness of 
Hell, shut out from the sight of God and His Glory I 
And this dreadful doom may be ours if we trifle 
with sin or refuse to drive it out, or try to make a 
compromise between God and the Devil ! Only by 
the continual consecration of ourselves to God and 
by the practice of holiness can we be safe and sure 
and be able to offer our souls to God at death, as re- 
deemed by the Blood of Jesus, and as ready, after 
purification and perfecting in the Intermediate 



OFFERING OF OUR SOULS TO GOD. 61 

State, to enter into the joy and glory of heaven. 
Both in life and death we should ever consign our- 
selves to God's keeping, never dismayed or dis- 
couraged, for God sees us, loves us, cares for us, 
watches us, and will do all that is needful if we 
only rest in Him, safe in the Bosom of the Father. 
XLIX. If we fill our hearts with the love of 
God, the Devil cannot find a place. If we live the 
Christ-life, the life in union with God, perfected by 
prayer and sacrament, the things of this world will 
have little hold upon us. If we have that mental 
and spiritual attitude of recollection, with knees 
on the ground, eyes on the Cross, and thoughts in 
heaven, the flesh will have little power to lead us 
into sin. God should be all in all : our beginning, 
our end, our aim, our ambition, our very life until 
His will, His word, His way, His worship are our 
constant aspiration and our dearest desire. And 
to realize this, as we have said, there must be 
the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our 
Blessed Lord, which is God's food for the soul, the 
strengthening, refreshing, and cleansing of the 
spirit, the very bread of immortality. 1 Live with- 



4 St. John vi. 53, 54. 



62 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

out Communion, and the soul is fairly starved ; die 
without Communion, and the soul is sadly stained, 
and — if we take Our Lord's words absolutely liter- 
ally — is lost. 1 Surely, if we value our souls, we 
will save them for God's Glory ! If we love our 
souls, we will not starve them and stain them ! If 
we love our souls, we will give them Food, the 
Blessed Sacrament of the Altar ! If we love our 
souls, we will regularly and frequently receive the 
Holy Communion. Then when our end draws 
near, and we go down through the valley of the 
shadow of death, let us go with souls cleansed from 
sin and strengthened for the journey by the last 
Sacrament of the Blessed Body and Blood of Our 
Adorable Saviour, Who hath said, "Who eateth 
My Flesh and drinheth My Blood hath eternal 
life and I will raise him up at the last day/' 2 
Tor those Holy Mysteries are well called the 
Viaticum or Food for the last journey, whereby 
with God with us we awake to behold Him face 
to face. Then and then only can we make the 
perfect offering of our soul to God, "Father, 
into Thy hands I commend my spirit/' as the an- 



1 St. John vi. 53, 54. 2 St. John vi. 54. 



OFFERING OF OUR SOULS TO GOD. 63 

gels bear it safely away to meet its Lord and Sav- 
iour Whom it has learned to know and love in the 
Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. 

L. "Who, then, is willing to consecrate his 
service this day unto the Lord" 1 in the Life of 
Offering unto Almighty God ? In the shadow of 
the Cross let us answer the question, as we hear 
the Master speaking His Seven Last Words of 
Love. There is the call to the consecrated life: 
"If any man will come after Me, let him deny 
himself and take up his cross and follow Me/' 2 

What response will we make to the Crucified ? 
Should we linger in the valleys when the great 
mountains loom before us, because they are hard 
to climb? Should we prefer self to Jesus, be- 
cause to be with Him means the carrying of the 
Cross? Let us remember that rest comes with 
the Cross, for He who cannot err hath said : "My 
yoke is easy and My burden is light/' 3 

Let us remember that the heights climbed lead 
to heaven, that the Cross borne wins the crown, 
and for our encouragement let us see in the saints, 



1 1. Chronicles xxix. 5. 3 St. Matthew xi. 30. 

2 St. Matthew xvi. 24. 



64 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

the victory won in lives similar to ours, where 
the aim and aspiration of the soul was God. For 
we do not carry the Cross alone or unaided. 
Jesus, the Burden Bearer, is with us and the grace 
of God assists us. We need but to press onward 
patiently and perseveringly, in the power of the 
Good God, Who is ever there to help by Divine 
means. 

LI. Nothing worth anything is done in a day. 
The Life of Offering is not attained at once. The 
foundation stones must be laid before the beauti- 
ful superstructure can be built. Patience, perse- 
verance and prayer are the means to the end, God 
being the Master Builder, we the workmen di- 
rected by His Word, the Divine Will, the Plan 
carried out. Like a little child picking berries, 
who walks firmly because held up by his father's 
hand, we pluck the fruits and flowers of a holy 
life, by prayer and sacraments sustained by the 
hand of the Father in heaven. We climb by 
climbing, ever getting nearer and nearer the full 
realization of the Life of Offering, by constantly 
keeping the aim before the mind and steadily 
bending all of our energies to attain to it. As bod- 



OFFERING OF OUR SOULS TO GOD. 65 

ily exercise develops the muscles and makes pos- 
sible feats of strength once beyond us, so spiritual 
exercise develops the soul and makes us able to 
accomplish that which at the start was impossible. 

LII. "Nil desperandum/' never despair, is the 
word of the Christian. "My grace is sufficient for 
thee/' is God's word of encouragement. If we cul- 
tivate the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, if we 
with patience and perseverance run the race set be- 
fore us, if we seek the Divine grace in prayer and 
sacrament and cooperate with it, by using our every 
talent, opportunity, and privilege, bending all our 
energies to accomplish our aim, the impossible 
will become the possible, the ideal will be realized. 
Then with a wonderful thrill of joy and thanksgiv- 
ing we will see ourselves growing more and more 
into the Likeness of Our Dear Redeemer, until, 
poor and imperfect copies though we be, we reflect 
in some measure at least the Glory of His sub- 
lime sacrifice of Self, in offering ourselves, with 
all that we love and all that we have, to be used for 
the Honour, Praise, and Glory of God. So every 
cross will be a glorious gem in our crown in that 
endless future when penitent sinners as glorious 



66 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

saints, who have overcome self and turned many to 
righteousness/ will shine as stars forever and ever, 
in the Kingdom of the Father, in the Glory of 
His Beautiful Face. 2 



1 Daniel xii. 3. 2 Revelation xxii. 4. 



IX. 

THE LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 

"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 

hath shined in our hearts to give the Light of 

the Knowledge of the Glory of God in 

the Face of Jesus Christ. 3 ' — 

II. Corinthians iv. 6. 

When the shadow of the Cross of Shame and 
the darkness of sin and death clouded our life on 
Good Friday, and made us more clearly realize the 
love of God and the awf ulness of sin, we were close 
to Our Dear Lord, and looking at His sufferings 
and listening to His words we were moved to new 
faith, love, and repentance as we saw Light in the 
Face of Jesus Christ. On Easter, in the triumph 
of the Eesurrection, when we commemorate the 
Son of God rising again from the dead, coming 
from the tomb in His glorified Human Nature, 
again we see Light in the Face of Jesus Christ, 
as He Who is both true God and true Man, in the 
splendour of His Risen Body reveals to us the 



68 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Glory of God, in the victory over death and the 
grave won by Our Lord. 

How wonderful the light is, both in the natural 
world and in the spiritual word! How it ever 
warms, illumines, and purifies, as the sun in the 
sky, the light of the earth, drives away the shadow 
of darkness, as the Sun of Righteousness, the 
Light of the world, drives away the shadow of sin ! 

We picture the creation of the present world : 
all was chaos, the earth was without form or 
beauty, and darkness brooded over the face of the 
deeps. What a change came when God said, "Let 
there be light" 1 and there was light, and the shad- 
ows passed away at His command, and at last the 
work of creation being completed, the world stood 
forth in all the glory of the light, reflecting the 
splendour of Almighty God, their Creator. 

How sad and strange that in a world of such 
surpassing beauty, when, as St. Gregory the Great 
said, "the works of nature were the footprints of 
the Creator," man, made in the Image of God, 
after His Likeness, the crowning glory of his 
Maker, should have forsaken the light, and by the 



1 Genesis i. 3. 



LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 69 

Fall in the Garden of Eden have brought dark- 
ness, death, and disease into the world ! The soul 
full of light became full of darkness. The desire 
for evil, the doing of evil made chaos of the heart 
of man, robbed his spirit of the form and beauty 
of godliness and caused to spread over his sin- 
stricken soul a darkness such as shrouded the earth 
before there was light, and the Devil held him in 
durance vile, in which state the will, weakened by 
sin, assented to evil as the very habit of life. 

O ! What a change, more glorious and more 
wonderful than at the Creation, was there, when 
by the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Light 
of the world came to dwell among men, and sin- 
ners saw Light in the Face of Jesus Christ, in 
Him who came down from Heaven, and without 
ceasing to be God, became Man for us, and in His 
Sacred Person, the Second Person of the Adorable 
Trinity, shined into our hearts to give the Light 
of the Knowledge of the Glory of God. "The 
Light shineth in the darhness" It "lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world/' 1 as the Son of 
God dwelt among us and by His very Presence 



1 St. John i. 



70 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

gave f orin, beauty, and nobility to human life and 
human character, and men saw life and character 
in a new light: the Light in the Face of Jesus 
Christ. 

Look at the Life and Death of Our Blessed 
Lord ! Do they not form the purifying and illum- 
inating power of the world ? Do they not give an 
inspiration to every chapter of earthly life? 
Do they not give us Light in the Face of Jesus 
Christ? In the Holy Manger, the light of the 
Nativity radiated in glory from the Babe of Beth- 
lehem, hallowing infancy. In the Home of Naz- 
areth, the light of the Holy Childhood shone forth 
in that humble abode, sanctifying the home. In 
His Ministry among men, the light of a Perfect 
Example revealed precepts put into practice, en- 
nobling work. In the Agony and Passion, the 
light of patient submission to the will of God 
illumined the sufferings of the Master and sancti- 
fied pain and sorrow. In the Death upon the 
Cross the light of absolute self-sacrifice and sur- 
render shone forth, brightening the entrance from 
death into life. Out of the darkness of sin, out 
of the darkness of sorrow, out of the darkness of 



LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 71 

suffering, out of the darkness of death there stands 
forth in glorious radiance the Sacred Person of 
the Lord, absolutely perfect in life and in death, 
giving us, whose eyes are dimmed with doubts, dis- 
couragements, and disappointment, light in the 
Face of Jesus Christ. 

And on Easter Day, how this Divine illumina- 
tion seems to shine with an added lustre and beau- 
ty, as the Sun of Righteousness Who shineth in the 
darkness in the Holy Incarnation, stands forth in 
the more glorious splendour of the Risen Body in 
the Holy Resurrection! The Tree of Shame is 
now vacant, the quiet Tomb is now empty, for the 
Lord is risen from the dead, and the triumph song 
of the Church has begun ! 

Who can tell the full glory of the Risen 
Christ ! Who can describe the joy of the faithful 
throughout the ages in this victory over death and 
the grave! Is it not by contrast only that oppo- 
sites are best seen? Does not Good Friday, the 
day of darkness, reveal in greater glory Easter 
Day, the day of light? Does not our sorrow for 
the sufferings of Our Crucified Saviour help our 
joy in the triumph of Our Risen King ? At Crea- 



72 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

tion, the sun rose upon a darkened world and it 
was light in the earth. At the Resurrection, the 
Sun of Righteousness rose upon a darkened life 
and it is light in the soul. And the joy is not only 
for Jesus, but also for ourselves, for the Resurrec- 
tion of Our Lord is our very anchor of hope, the 
promise of our own glorious future, for as He rose 
again from the dead so shall all of the faithful 
rise, to awake after His Likeness, satisfied. 1 

What, then, is the knowledge of this Glory of 
God as revealed in the Face of Jesus Christ? 
What is the Church's belief as to the Resurrec- 
tion ? On Good Friday we saw Our Lord's Body 
placed within the tomb; we saw His Soul in 
Paradise preaching to the "spirits in prison/' 2 
offering salvation to those who had gone before, 
and we know that as God, Our Lord was present 
both with His Human Body and His Human Soul. 
The first day, Good Friday, passed, and the Sacred 
Body of the Master still slept cold and silent in 
the sepulchre. The second day, Holy Saturday, 
came, and there was no change. But when the 
third day, Easter morning, dawned, Our Lord's 



1 Psalm xvii. 16. 2 St. Peter iii. 19. 



LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 73 

Body and Soul were reunited and in His Power 
as Almighty God, Jesus Christ rose again from 
the dead, passing through the solid rock that closed 
the entrance to the tomb (superior to all the laws 
of nature, which owned Him as their God and 
Creator), and then successively appeared to the 
Holy Women and the Disciples as recorded in the 
Scriptures. 

May we picture the Risen Body of the Lord ? 
We do not presume thoroughly to understand it. 
But we may so inquire as to its condition that we 
may grasp such measure of the truth as has been 
revealed to us, and see the state of our own future 
bodies. Our Lord's Body at the Besurrection was 
the same which was born of Mary, was nailed to 
the Cross, and was placed in the Tomb. It had all 
of the marks of the Sacred Wounds j 1 it had all of 
its former powers and possessions, and Our Lord 
proved its reality by sight, 2 by touch, 3 and by tak- 
ing food. 4 It was no new Body but that which He 
had before, in its risen state exactly the same in 
substance but different in condition, for Our Lord's 



1 St. John xx. 25, 29. 3 St. John xx. 27, St. Luke xxiv. 39. 

2 St. Luke xxiv. 31. 4 St. Luke xxiv. 43. 



74 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

Body was henceforth possessed of subtilty, agil- 
ity, impassibility, and glory, that is, it could pass 
through any substance, it could be anywheres at 
will, it could no longer suffer, and it was full of 
light and beauty. 

Such was Our Lord's Resurrection Body, one 
and identical with that He assumed at the Incar- 
nation, but now gifted with the new powers apper- 
taining to the risen state. Hence the joy, the 
triumph, the exaltation of those who saw the 
Sacred Body of Jesus, risen and glorified, but the 
same Blessed Form which rested in the Manger, 
was nursed by Mary, was worshipped by Wise 
Men, and was loved and adored by those who fol- 
lowed Him in His Sacred Ministry! And that 
joy is ours, as we picture the Sacred Body with its 
Precious Wounds, the same which was born, died, 
and rose again in Christ's Own Power as Almighty 
God, now crowned with Glory in Heaven. 

Do we feel our minds and hearts and souls 
aglow with faith, love, and devotion, or do we long 
for some further witness of the truth of the Resur- 
rection ? If the latter be the case, we point to the 
Holy Eucharist, for the Sacrifice of the Altar is 



LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 75 

the continual evidence and proof of the Risen 
Lord. There we knoiv Jesus in "the breaking of 
Bread." 1 There we feel the power of His Resur- 
rection. For the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar 
is not only the continual memorial of His Sacrifice 
and Death on the Cross. It is also the perpetual 
gift of the Risen Saviour. For the elements of 
Bread and Wine but veil the Body and Blood of 
Jesus Christ, hiding from us the Glory of the 
Risen Lord, which is beyond human sight to be- 
hold. 

There is a beautiful story 2 told of a man who 
said to a Bishop who was trying to convert him 
to belief in Jesus and the Resurrection: "If I 
could only see Our Lord, I would believe in that 
Sacred Presence, and in this evidence of the Risen 
Christ. Show me the Lord and let me look upon 
Him." "My child," said the Bishop, "you could 
not behold God, for He is too beautiful and glori- 
ous for man, stained with sin, of the earth earthy, 
to look upon and live. I will, however, show you 



1 St. Luke xxiv. 30-35. 

2 This with several other thoughts was suggested by a 
Meditation of the Rev. Dr. A. G. Mortimer. 



76 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

His Ambassador, and from his glory you can think 
of the greater Glory of God." Leading the man 
from the church into the light of the noon day, the 
Bishop pointed to the sun shining in his splendour, 
and said: "See the glory of the ambassador of 
God." The man raised his eyes and immediately 
turned them away, as the light blinded him, and 
said: "I cannot stand the sight/'' "My child," 
said the Bishop, with a smile, "if you cannot look 
upon the glory of the ambassador, how could you 
look upon the greater Glory of God ?" So with us, 
we must not hope here on earth to see Jesus in re- 
vealed Glory, but with the eyes of faith, love, and 
devotion we may know Him in the Sacrament and 
learn there of the Risen Lord as we see Light in 
the Face of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection is the 
doctrine of life. The Communion is the Sacra- 
ment of life. And He Who comes is the Lord of 
life, to impart to us Divine Life and be the prom- 
ise and pledge to us of our unending future, hid 
with Christ in God. 

Nor let us forget that which light does: it 
reveals form and colour, it purifies and warms. On 
a dark night we cannot see the delicate formation 



LIGHT IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 77 

and exquisite colouring of the flowers, but when 
the light shines their loveliness is revealed. So in 
a darkened soul there cannot be seen the form of 
godliness or the colour of character, but when the 
Light of the world shines, there the beauty is seen. 

Let us first seek the Light in the Face of Jesus 
Christ, that His Glory may be reflected in us and 
that we may see to think and speak and act aright 
in that Divine Illumination. And then let us 
seek that Light in the Face of Jesus Christ, that 
we may not only be illumined, but may also be 
warmed, that we may be full to overflowing with 
the love of God. For with ourselves empty of sin 
and worldliness by Lenten penitence, we must be 
filled with love and holiness in the risen life, else 
the Devil will return to the house that was swept, 
with seven spirits worse than himself, and the last 
state of that soul will be worse than the first. 

But seeking Light in the Face of Jesus Christ, 
illumined and warmed by our Risen Lord, Lent, 
Holy Week, and Easter will be real steps in the 
ladder that leads to God, when by Love of God, 
Devotion to Jesus, and attendance upon the 
Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, we will live the 



78 THE LIFE OF OFFERING. 

risen life, not only talking about Jesus, or think- 
ing about Jesus, but also, and above all, receiving 
Jesus and living Jesus. 

The Psalmist says : "Thy Face, Lord, will I 
seek" Let us in our life of offering ever seek 
the Lord's Face, "looking unto Jesus the Author 
and Finisher of our faith: who for the joy that 
was set before Him endured the Cross, despising 
the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the 
Throne of God/' 1 Then the Light will shine into 
our hearts, to give the Light of the Knowledge of 
the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ, the 
beautiful Face of Our Eisen Lord. 

In His Name, then, may we ask and pray that 
"The Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord make 
His Face to shine upon us and be gracious unto 
us. The Lord lift up the Light of His Counte- 
nance upon us and give us peace, both now and 
evermore. Amen." 2 



1 Hebrews xii. 5. 2 See Numbers vi. 24-26, and P. B. 






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